A BitTorrent client is a program that allows the use of the ubiquitous BitTorrent protocol for transferring files. The BitTorrent protocol allows efficient transfer of files or groups of files – in very small segments – between computers (’peers’) rather than from a single repository on the internet. Transferring files over the web – for instance when you download something from a website – is done over the HTTP protocol.

There are many differences between HTTP and the BitTorrent protocol.

BitTorrent works by users downloads and opening a small file with information about the files they want to download. These small files – torrents – contain the detail of a public ‘tracker’. A tracker will organize peers to download the files in the torrents that it caters for.

Once a group of peers have connected the download process will start. All the torrents’ files will be downloaded by all the peers section by section: the process is not linear as it is in http transfers, and while you are obtaining the last few segments of the files someone else may be transferring the first few segments that you have on your machine. This ’sharing’ philosophy is key to torrents’ success.